Musician Stormzy and Crystal Palace star Wilfried Zaha are set to buy non-league club Croydon Athletic, their hometown football team.

They are part of a consortium along with Danny Young, head of player care at Crystal Palace. The consortium has exchanged contracts for the sale with the south London club, subject to approval from the Football Association and the league, said the club in a statement.

AFC Croydon Athletic, or “The Rams,” is a community-owned club formed in 2012 after a former club collapsed. The club plays at Mayfield Stadium, where the clubhouse has capacity for up to 100 people.

Chairman Paul Smith said the club is hopeful for more investment under new ownership. “We're very much a community-owned club, and we want the club to grow and the facilities to develop,” he said. “Like any other non-league club we're often constrained by what we can achieve.”

He said the club’s 30 to 40 members have been in discussions about the ownership transfer for months with the consortium. Smith added that the club was impressed by the community understanding of Stormzy and Zaha.

“Both of them are boys that grew up locally, literally within spitting distance of the ground,” said Smith.

Celebrity ownership of Croydon Athletic would follow in the footsteps of Wrexham AFC in Wales, which was bought by actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney in 2020. They transformed the fortunes of the club, turning it into a TV show called Welcome to Wrexham.

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Author: Helen Chandler-Wilde